The Most (un) Documented Mexican Artist

Join internationally acclaimed artist and activist Guillermo Gómez-Peña for a special performance at Bellevue Arts Museum.

In his latest solo work, The Most (un) Documented Mexican Artist, Gómez-Peña combines new and classic performance material to present a unique perspective on the immediate future of the Americas. His self-styled “imaginary activism” invokes performance art as a form of radical democracy and citizenship.

Combining spoken word poetry, activist theory, radical storytelling and language experimentation, Gómez-Peña offers critical and humorous commentary about the art world, academia, new technologies, the culture of war and violence in the US, organized crime in Mexico, gender and race politics, and the latest wave of complications surrounding gentrification in the “creative city.” This spoken word performance includes a cameo by troupe member and collaborator, Balitronica Gómez.

About the ArtistBesides his international work with the legendary troupe La Pocha Nostra, Gómez-Peña has presented his solo work at museums, universities, galleries and theatres throughout the US, Canada, Europe, Latin America, Australia and South Africa. His unique format reveals the process of creating, languaging and performing material where the process becomes the actual project. It is precisely in his new solo work where Gómez-Peña’s literature, theory, activism, pedagogy & live art come together in a wonderfully strange mix.

Gómez-Peña has spent many years developing his unique solo style, “a combination of embodied poetry, performance activism and theatricalizations of postcolonial theory.” In his ten books, as in his live performances, digital art, videos and photo performances, he pushes the boundaries still further, exploring what’s left for artists to do in a repressive global culture of censorship, paranoid nationalism and what he terms “the mainstream bizarre.” Most recently he has also been exploring the poetic and activist use of new technologies and social media.